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Desmond Tutu, anti-apartheid icon, dies at 90
- dwd 5y agoAlways a voice of reason and compassion. His influence, good humour and example will be greatly missed.
- dynamite-ready 5y agoI can't recall many people braver than him, dead or alive.
- SideburnsOfDoom 5y agoThere is a suburb of Cape Town called Bishopscourt. It is high up on the hill, near the botanical garden, and filled with Anglophone old money, trees and mansions. (1) It gets it's name of course from the "official residence of the Archbishop of Cape Town" (Anglican / Church of England). It was of course a "whites only" area under Apartheid until 1991 (2). Black people there could be assumed to be house or garden servants. When Mr Tutu was installed there as the first black Archbishop of Cape Town in 1986, he moved in without seeking exemption from this law (3). He would put on his jogging outfit and take his exercise on the streets there, smiling and waving to neighbours as if it was the most normal thing in the world. And in time, it was. That is praxis. he was one of the best of us, always seeking a way to reach out. 1) "ranked sixth richest suburb in South Africa" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishopscourt,_Cape_Town https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishopscourt,_Cape_Town 2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_Areas_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_Areas_Act 3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desmond_Tutu#Archbishop_of_Cape_Town:_1986%E2%80%931994 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desmond_Tutu#Archbishop_of_Cap...
- throwawaylinux 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago1) why would a US president want to live in the White house in DC? It doesn't matter what they want, the official residence comes with the job. I do not think that Mr Tutu spent every single day of his tenure in Bishopscourt - you are right, it wasn't his scene. But he was a common sight there. 2) It was literally illegal for Mr Tutu to live there, then. Doing so anyway, with the backing of a major church, who chose to send him there, was a political act. Which he performed with good humour.
- throwawaylinux 5y agoThat is not the case for the US president, they can live where they choose. But I did not realize the archbishop was required to live in that residence as part of the terms of their service. That answers my question then.
- SideburnsOfDoom 5y agoI don't know exactly what was "required", but I do know that the tradition of "going to where the organisation sends you" is far stronger in the clergy than it is in elected politicians.
- pge 5y agomuch less so in the anglican church (which doesn’t really send anyone anywhere) than in the catholic church where priests are assigned to positions
- jayceekay 5y ago
- ragtagtag 5y ago"Without seeking exemption from the law" is the key phrase. He refused to respect a discriminatory law, and, by living there, was effectively daring the Apartheid government to arrest a sitting archbishop.
- throwaway55421 5y agoAn inspiration. The best way to challenge insanity is to simply ignore it and move forward without consideration. You can't debate apartheid because it's farcical to begin with. The terminology even - exemption - makes our brains feel fuzzy, confused. What is this "exemption"? I'll just do my thing, thanks. We could all learn something from this.
- api 5y ago“You can’t reason someone out of an opinion they didn’t reason themselves into.”
- SideburnsOfDoom 5y agoOr in the words of Desmond Tutu: "There is nothing more difficult than waking someone who is only pretending to be asleep."
- wolverine876 5y ago> The best way to challenge insanity is to simply ignore it and move forward without consideration. That's a tactic to be used in specific circumstances, such as by the Archbishop in a specific, peaceful neighborhood. It's for people who are safe. For a vulnerable person, it can be very dangerous: violating norms can end in being arrested or lynched - that's what lynchings and oppression are. That is the problem. Civil rights tactics such as lunch-counter sit-ins worked because they were carefully strategized and organized, and many people still got hurt and killed. For example, https://duckduckgo.com/?q=civil+rights+birmingham+fire+hoses%2C+etc&iar=videos&iax=videos&ia=videos https://duckduckgo.com/?q=civil+rights+birmingham+fire+hoses...
- fidesomnes 5y ago
- archsurface 5y agoThat's a bit of a spun story. There was apartheid proper, and technically apartheid. By that time, '86, my colonial school had black students. Tutu didn't need exemption, and wasn't being particularly rebellious.
- SideburnsOfDoom 5y agoIDK, memory and a check in Wikipedia confirms that things were still pretty bad in '86 and '87. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_in_South_Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_in_South_Africa it's a litany of explosions and killings, and the turnaround may have been in the works, but it doesn't surface until December '88 when "Nelson Mandela is moved to Victor Verster Prison" (from Robben Island) I don't recall school in integration in '86 near me and yes, I would have noticed. If you had that you were lucky. I wasn't assuming that Mr Tutu was taking any great personal risk, but he was driving progress with cheerful good humour.
- archsurface 5y agoI was not lucky - the following year there were fully multi-racial schools, equal numbers.
- yob28 5y ago
- ragtagtag 5y agoArchbishop Tutu told me, a few years ago, that he had received a strange email from someone claiming to be a lawyer from a small English parish in which Tutu had been a curate in the 1970s. The person was asking for Tutu's assistance in transferring the fabulous wealth of a deceased Nigerian prince to his widow. “Ah, a 419 scam,” I said. “A what now?” I explained what a 419 scam was, and, fearing the worst, asked what he had done about it. It turned out that he still had a number of friends in that area, and had forwarded it on to a friend to investigate. “Never heard of this lawyer chap,” the response came, “DO NOT respond!” So, of course the Archbishop responded. For a moment, I put myself in the shoes of this “Nigerian Prince”, getting an email from “Archbishop Desmond Tutu”, shaming the alleged prince for attempting to scam innocents on the internet. I started giggling. “So what happened next?” I asked. “Oh, he emailed me back, and tried to sell me something else.”
- DoreenMichele 5y agoThere comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they're falling in. ― Desmond Tutu May he rest in peace.
- AussieWog93 5y agoA damn shame. RIP.
- bradwood 5y agoI met him as a schoolboy when he came to give a talk at our school. This would've been late 80s. He told the story of the "Blaloon" seller and that the red, yellow, blue, "blaloons" all had the same stuff inside. His mispronunciation of "balloons" was endearing and stayed with me ever since. Our family would often remark on it with affection. At the demise of apartheid he led the Truth and Reconciliation Commission which was such a critical instrument in the peaceful dismantling of apartheid. It's a shame that we don't see more of this approach around the world. RIP.
- dwd 5y agoHe was a warm and humorous individual with an infectious chuckle. I had the privilege to attend a week-long convention where he delivered the keynote address each day back in '87. Everyone talks about Mandela, but I have always had far more respect for Tutu and his role in bringing about the end of aparteid.
- inwardsword 5y ago
- dang 5y agoWe've banned this account. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- thehonest 5y ago
- mft_ 5y agoCan you expand more - on the ‘reversed racism’ aspect? I’ve spent a good amount of time in CT with long-time white locals, and this isn’t something I experienced or sensed.
- avoid3d 5y agoI disagree with this comment. I don’t want to start a debate, just to give my experience and perspective. I am a South African, I am white, just for transparency. In my experience: White people are still in a position of economic and social power such that the (unjust) assumptions made by an average person during apartheid are still mostly the same. White people are stereotypically more educated, have more money, connections and are more trustworthy etc. To say that white people are the subject of reverse racism while making any comparison to apartheid, where people where abducted, tortured, disappeared, forcefully relocated and removed from their land, is simply ignorant. I make this post not to try and change your mind, but simply to give some representation to an alternate view point.
- VictorPath 5y agoWhat is an "imbicile"?
- medapart 5y ago
- rozab 5y agoWhere I live, a 2:2 university degree is still referred to as a 'Desmond' and many people don't even know why.
- jayflux 5y agoYeah cockney rhyming slang (UK), if you get a 2:2 degree you’ve got a “Desmond”. I’m not surprised people don’t know why, when I first heard it I had to look it up. I don’t think kids grow up learning about Desmond Tutu.
- throwaway984393 5y agoAlways loved this episode of Late Late Show where Craig interviewed Archbishop Desmond Tutu. "You know craig, I think you're crazy. We need your kind of crazy. giggles" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12OlAe2Sfes#t=14m https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12OlAe2Sfes#t=14m
- dan_pixelflow 5y ago'If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.' Rest in peace.
- ttiurani 5y agoThe quote continues: "If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality." The moral obligation Tutu captured with that aphorism has affected me immensely over the years. Also: “All of our humanity is dependent upon recognizing the humanity of others.”
- Markoff 5y ago[flagged]
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- wesleywt 5y agoYou should get vaccinated and stop thinking you know better than people who are better tha you.
- kennywinker 5y agoSober drivers kill people too, not just drunk drivers - yet we have no problem prohibiting driving drunk. But even that analogy breaks down because it’s been 1 year of vaccine’s existing, and in most places much less than 6 months of vaccine-only rules. This is a health crisis. Nobody wants or intends this to be forever. It’s like crying injustice because of a temporary ban on drunk driving.
- LarrySellers 5y agoVaccines reduce the spread of disease, full stop.
- ok_dad 5y agoVaccinations decrease the chance you’ll take valuable hospital space from someone who isn’t there for covid. That’s the real issue. Anyways, maybe you’ll eventually get the picture and get vaccinated, maybe not, but eventually you will be a pariah in the community and I certainly won’t be there to defend your idea of freedom.
- authed 5y ago
- woodruffw 5y ago...all of which appear to be benign diplomatic cables or press releases. Can you state more explicitly what you're trying to imply?
- authed 5y ago> woodruffw - ...all of which appear to be benign diplomatic cables or press releases. Can you state more explicitly what you're trying to imply? Not implying anything? Can you explain why you think that? Do you think that about every fact that you are presented?
- woodruffw 5y agoPerhaps it's overly cynical, but "X name has Y hits on Wikileaks" reads to me as an oblique claim of wrongdoing by X. Famously, that particular tactic was used during the last American presidential election, with the "Y hits" including silly things like birthday emails and recipes. If you just meant "here are some potentially interesting documents that have Desmond Tutu's name in them," then it's not clear what linking to Wikileaks offers that linking to WaPo's, WSJ's, NYT's, or even just Google's search results does not. But normally linking to the results of a search with no other context would be considered a frivolous thing to post, which is again why I assumed that you had some other implied statement in mind.
- secfirstmd 5y agoThere's a certain irony that many people who celebrate the life of Desmond Tutu and his fight against apartheid continue to ignore that he said Israel does the same thing and should be subject to boycott. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/apr/29/comment https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/apr/29/comment
- dagaci 5y agoI dont think anyone is ignoring it, its a Heated topic and actually quite an issue in South African politics now (https://english.alaraby.co.uk/news/protests-greet-miss-south-africa-upon-return-israel https://english.alaraby.co.uk/news/protests-greet-miss-south...) Wikipedia has a page where the general issues are enumerated https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_the_apartheid_analogy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_the_apartheid_analo.... Historically scrutiny originally fueled because Israel is seen as a supporter of the apartheid system even after all other western countries had withdrawn support https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-why-israel-supported-apartheid-regime-1.5298552 https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-why-israel-supporte...
- vidarh 5y agoIt's still ignored by a lot of people who do not hesitate to argue apartheid is bad, yet can't stomach the comparison. Tutu's willingness to call Israeli government policy apartheid, alongside other prominent apartheid fighters, like e.g. Arthur Goldreich, matters greatly in legitimising resistence against those policies. Even so every new person or organisation deciding to come out and saying this is still met with fierce resistance.
- dagaci 5y agoDesmond Tutu views were incredibly consistant and technical, rather than emotional. Policy of Israel is driven by the need to maintain a Jewish majority franchise, should not need to explain why, however the simple demographics of the Arabs would quickly create Arab majority in Israel if Israel were to acknowlege soverentiy over the occupied territories or even permit the return of refugees. An outcome like the above is of course clearly completely unacceptble, locally and in the west. However Israel cannot allow even those territories to become independant because that would require giving up security control, control over valuable land and other natural resources like water. No nation gives away its territory easily! So current status quo with the territories must be maintained!
- iancmceachern 5y agoMy favorite tid bit from his book, the book of joy about his and the Dalai Lama, I paraphrase. A man met with Mr. Tutu and asked him to pray for the man's son, who was gravely ill and in need of medical treatment. The boy got the treatment he needed and became healthy again. Years later, the same boy fell ill again and the boys father once again asked the archbishop to pray for him. Mr. Tutu replied to the boys father "I never stopped (praying for your son). He had such deep, meaningful compassion for all his fellow humans. Just reading his writings made a significant meaningful positive impact on my life and well being. Thank you Mr. Tutu.
- hbogert 5y ago
- yob28 5y ago